1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to door assemblies, and particularly to solid stile and rail doors and solid core wood doors used as a component in a door assembly including door frame, adjacent wall support members to which the door frame is attached, hinges for pivotally mounting the door on the door frame, and a lock assembly including a lock device mounted on the door and cooperating with a strike plate mounted in the door frame.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is believed that the prior art relating to this invention resides in Class 292. A search of this class has revealed the existance of the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,688,626; 1,762,326; 1,924,806; 3,152,825; 3,159,416; and 4,065,162.
It is not generally known that a burglar can break into most homes with just one swift kick. In most instances, such kicks are delivered to the door adjacent the lock assembly. Since most doors are not constructed to withstand such force, the lock or the door or the lock jamb split and break apart and thus give access to the premises. Accordingly, it is one of the objects of this invention to provide a door assembly reinforced in such a way that it resists forced entry by this modus operandi.
In a special report dated October 1984, Consumer Reports states that more than 5 million homes will be burglarized in the United States, with something like 4 billion dollars worth of property stolen. Continuing, the report points out that many insurance companies offer discounts on homeowner's insurance policies according to which measures are taken to minimize the likelihood of a home being burglarized.
Statistics collected from the San Jose, Calif. Police Department, San Jose, Calif. being a city of approximately 650,000 people, indicate that the most likely month that a home will be burglarized is January, the most likely day of the week for burglaries is Friday, and the most likely four hour block of time is between 12 noon and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. From these statistics, it is apparent that window entry occurred in 45.4% of the entries, while door entry occurred in 38.3% of the entries. The location of the point of entry that appears to be most prevalent is the rear of the house, at 37.3% of the entries, with the front of the house accounting for 31.3% of the entries, and the side of the house accounting for 21.6% of the entries. Entries related specifically to doors, either front door or rear door, amounted to 17.7% for the front door, and 13.8% for a rear door.
From these figures, it is apparent that burglarizing of residences, whether they be homes, apartments, mobile homes, condominiums, duplexes or other types of premises, is very prevalent at least in San Jose, Calif., and from these figures it is presumed that such forced entries are just as prevalent in other comparable metropolitan areas. In the San Jose area, 72.6% of the entries occurred in houses. Only 14.3% occurred in apartments, with the remainder of the entries being spread between the other types of premises.
There are three general areas that may be pinpointed as weaknesses in a door assembly. One such area is the door frame at the lock point. Most conventional door frames are prefabricated in mills from various softwoods. Such softwoods are susceptible of bending and splitting and do not provide a very secure structure to which to fasten the door hardware. For instance, the conventional strike plate used on most conventional door assemblies constitutes nothing more than a flat plate rarely more than 1/16" in thickness, and having a large aperture to receive the door latch or dead bolt. This flat plate is most usually recessed into the softwood lock jamb of the frame no more than the thickness of the plate, and is secured in position by two relatively short, approximately 1/2" wood screws. Because in most instances the strike plate is attached to the lock jamb adjacent the inside edge of the jamb, one strong kick on the door adjacent the lock assembly, can easily split the wood from which the lock jamb is formed, or strip the thin metal plate and the screws from the softwood lock jamb. Accordingly, it is an important object of this invention to provide a system of hardware for a door assembly that resists forced entry by the imposition of kicks or other methods of battering to gain unauthorized entry.
The strike plate of most conventional door assemblies is recessed into the softwood lock jamb of the door frame, such strike plates nominally being approximately 1/16" in thickness. Accordingly, another object of the present invention is to replace such conventional relatively thin and fragile strike plates with a much thicker strike plate that is mortised into the lock jamb and secured not only to the lock jamb but also to the wall support members to which the door frame is attached.
Still another object of the invention in connection with the application of a reinforced strike plate is the provision of elongated screw fasteners to support the strike plate, the screw fasteners being driven into and through the lock jamb and into the wall support members behind the lock jamb at an angle other than 90.degree., and preferably in a direction that will tend to impose a tensile screw extraction force on the screws when unauthorized entry force is applied to the strike plate rather than a shearing force as with conventional strike plates.
A second area of weakness is the lock assembly of a conventional door. It is usually fitted to the door in a lock bore or hole that is bored in the door stile from one face through the other along an axis that is spaced approximately 23/8" from the edge of the door. Bored into the edge of the door so that it extends diametrically of the lock bore is the latch bore which is approximately 7/8" in diameter. It will thus be seen that the door edge portion that lies immediately adjacent the lock bore and the bolt or latch bore constitutes an extremely weak area in the door itself and is usually not strengthened materially by the usually thin and fragile face plate that is recessed into the edge of the door, and which provides an aperture for slidable bearing of the latch or bolt as it moves from an unlocked to a locked position. Accordingly, another object of the present invention is to provide a reinforcement plate adapted to be mortised into the door edge and having a thickness at least three times the thickness of the face plate, with the face plate being secured to this much heavier and longer reinforcement plate by use of machine screws.
Another object of the invention is to provide a reinforcement plate for the face plate of a door lock assembly which is secured to the door stile by extraordinarily long screw fasteners that extend into the door stile at angles other than 90.degree. to the face plate so as to reinforce the door stile against splitting.
The area of the door assembly immediately surrounding conventional hinge installations is the third weak area and is susceptible to intrusion by strong kicks. The reason for this is that most conventional hinge jambs are constructed from softwood, and the wood screws that are utilized to attach the hinge leafs to the door and to the hinge jamb are relatively short, and penetrate only the softwood frame member from which the jamb is constructed. Accordingly, another object of the invention is the provision of means associated with one or more of the hinges, that will resist forces imposed on the door that would tend to split the frame or to bend or shear the screws with which the hinges are attached to the hinge jamb.
In connection with the reinforcement of the hinge area, a more specific object of this invention is the placement of a reinforcement plate motised into the surface of the hinge jamb, underlying the associated leaf of the hinge and independently secured to the underlying hinge jamb and to the wall support member behind the hinge jamb by an elongated wood screw that penetrates these structural members at an angle other than 90.degree., with the associated leaf of the hinge being detachably secured to the reinforcement member by means of a machine screw.
The invention possesses other objects and features of advantage, some of which, with the foregoing, will be apparent from the following description and the drawings. It is to be understood however that the invention is not limited to the embodiment illustrated and described since it may be embodied in various forms within the scope of the appended claims.